Periscope, the livestreaming app for Twitter, is at the center of a controversy in Ohio where a sheriff last week charged an 18-year-old woman with broadcasting the sexual assault of her friend.

According to a report by NPR, prosecutors charged Marina Lonina with kidnapping, rape, sexual battery and distributing child pornography. Those prosecutors claim she used Twitter’s Periscope to livestream the rape of a 17-year-old.

NPR says Lonina’s attorney insists she was livestreaming the rape in attempt to get the alleged rapist to cease.

But prosecutor Ron O’Brien told NPR that was not the case.

“She told police she continued to livestream it,” O’Brien told NPR, “because she got caught up in the likes that were showing up on her screen. And she didn’t call 911. She giggled throughout.

NPR said it had not received a comment from Twitter about the incident. We’ve also reached out to Twitter for comment will update with any response.

As Twitter and now Facebook have embraced more and more live video, they are faced with the challenge of monitoring disturbing and pornographic content. Their ability to stay on top of that issue could could go along way to determining whether these services gain wider mainstream adoption, or whether they become NSFW niches.

RELATED BY

If your company's hiring and retention standards aren't keeping up with the times, you may be losing valuable job candidates and employees.To minimize the pitfalls of building a data-savvy workforce, consider these tips.

They are empowered
A study of Uber drivers finds that the company's algorithms amount to managerial control.However, it's not clear whether Uber's arrangement with its drivers can be applied to other organizations, including IT-oriented industries.

The one thing that the Gear VR experience is currently missing is, surprisingly, not content.In reality, Gear VR needs a controller, one that allows users to better interact with aforementioned Samsung and 3rd-party developer content.